Two new views that would be killer: document view and presentation view
First, love WF and the recent development taking place. The board view is a wonderful feature. Was encouraged to see that bi-directional links are on their way.
But, I wanted to make an initial suggestion for two additional views (I didn't see it in other threads, but may have missed it). I'm hesitant to do so, though, because I'm also fearful of too many gimmicks. WF is clean, and I really want it to stay that way. A lot of people are asking for a mind map view, and I can see the use case, but I would much prefer both a "document view" and a "presentation view."
Here's what I'm suggesting:
Document View:
Just like the ability to view a node and all sub-nodes as a board with categories, what if we had a view that took an outline and turned it into a document with headings, sub-headings, body paragraph text, and no bullets? In other words, the main bullet itself would become the title bullet when you clicked into the page. The next row of bullets would become H1 headers with the nested nodes displaying as paragraphs. Of course, I understand it would need to somehow be more dynamic than that, making the most sub-layer of bullets into body copy and then scaling up with sub-headers and headers perhaps.
But, this would allow us to essentially have an article view of an outline we're drafting, and that would be tremendous for me as a researcher. Icing on top would be allowing for some form of export with headers and body copy instead of as an outline. Perhaps this could be done through the current export function, or maybe a simple copy and paste that would maintain a document style instead of it coming out as bullets.
Presentation view:
In addition, a presentation view would be great. I'd love to be able to create a list of slides in a node, turn that node into a presentation that shows each slide full screen and allows for transitioning to the next slide with a keystroke or mouse click.
These two views, in addition to the newly added board view, would be tremendous for my workflow. Let me know if they need further clarification.
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Hi Keelan,
We do indeed have presentation mode on the table... we're looking at possibly including all sorts of media... inline videos, etc. The possibilities are wide open. I imagine document view may be mixed in there. This is all up in the air still... but it is being actively planned.
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Documents and Presentation Views. Both amazing suggestions! Hope they are heard.
And couldn't agree more on "fearful of too many gimmicks. WF is clean, and I really want it to stay that way."
Feel exactly the same. I am happy to see new useful features but hope they keep the editor as a plain text tool and as minimal as it always has been.
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Frank, also great news. Glad to hear the presentation view is in active development. That'll be stupendous for me.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the ability to add rich media. I imagine there are a lot of wrong ways to add it that would clutter up WF and only a few right ways. But, I'm confident in the dev team at WF to make it a pleasant, clean experience.
Also, of the two views, I actually think the document view would be of even more value. I write so much, and WF is the best outliner for content creation bar none. With the ability to switch into document view on article outlines, it would allow me to move seamlessly from outlining to drafting. I could have a nice, finished draft in WF, ready to export to Wordpress or Google Docs or wherever it needs to be for publication. The more I think about that, the more I would love it.
Again, thanks for the update and the active development of late. Thankful for the work! -
A good way to look at document view can be seen at this web app: https://www.speare.com Their implementation to create a document that consists of individual thoughts is very slick. If something like this is possible with Workflowy, that would be fantastic because at this point Speare has no offline implementation.
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That's pretty slick. I could see Workflowy functioning in a similar way with a document view, though my initial thought was much less involved. I was merely envisioning a view in the view options that removed the bullets and nesting and made the various levels into headings and subheadings. Then, it could either copy and paste into Word or Docs, or there could be an easy export function of some kind.
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